If that is your real name —

In Rhode Island, lying online is no longer a crime

The state repealed an obscure 1989 law forbidding fudging facts online.

Rhode Island state law makers voted this month to repeal an obscure 1989 law that forbid spreading untruths online, and punished scofflaws with a misdemeanor charge and a $500 fine.

The law was enacted to stop scammers and con artists from preying on the denizens of the then-tiny Internet. But it also weirdly included over-broad language that, "outlawed the 'transmission of false data' regardless of whether liars stood to profit from their deception or not," reported the Associated Press.

This meant that announcing you were the Lizard King, or claiming someone's mother loved bears a little too much, or telling the good people of Match.com that you're blonde when you're really brunette, would earn you a criminal record. The Associated Press says only a few people were ever prosecuted under the absurd law; the most recent case was in 2010, when a prison guard made a fake Facebook account to impersonate his boss. The man lost his job, but the charges were dropped, and the case spurred Rhode Island lawmakers to let 'Net-surfing Rhode Islanders weave more tangled Webs.

The law used to be found in Section 11-52-7 of the Rhode Island General Laws concerning Computer Crime. While it's still illegal to lie online in order to defraud people out of their money, the bill striking the more general prohibition on the transmission of false data was passed in the Rhode Island State House and Senate and signed by Governor Lincoln Chafee.

Luckily, Rhode Island is taking more rational steps to approaching the dubious nature of facts on the Internet than others. Recently, one of China's most popular social media sites introduced a points system where people too frequently found spreading "untruths" get kicked off the service. But for the moment, while all these Rhode Islanders are drunk on their new freedom, we should take all of their status updates with a grain of salt.